Creating my WordPress Site was an interesting experience. I have never done this before, so I was closely following along with the instructions.
Setting up the server environment through the cPanel and installing WordPress gave me appreciation for what goes on behind the scenes of a website. Rather than just interacting with a standard plug-and-play social media platform, having full administrator controls on my own hosted site feels like actually owning a digital space.
As I explored the customization options, I found it rewarding to tweak the design and build a personal “About” page to share my background and goals. It was slightly confusing to edit the specific part of the CSS code I wanted to.
Hosting your own website comes with great benefits, like complete creative freedom, ownership over your data, and a deeper understanding of web literacy and digital identity. At the same time, it introduces new responsibilities like managing security plugins like Akismet, handling updates, and troubleshooting when things do not look quite right.
In the future, I plan to use the platform not just for class reflections, but potentially as a digital Portfolio to showcase my academic work, archive research projects, or build community websites. It’s a powerful tool to have in the toolkit for future digital humanities work.
Oh no! The link you gave doesn’t link to the correct place. It shows an error page instead:
However, I like the theme you chose, it has a nice color palate. CSS can indeed be frustrating, though, I have found the tutorial on W3Schoolsto be quite helpful, if you have interest in learning more. As to you point about the responsibility with plugins, it is true there is more responsibility when installing various features, but now with plugins there are many cool features you can add to the site without implementing them manually.
I very much agree that it feels like “owning” part of the digital world. It is very different than posting things to pre-made sites.
In your opinion, is it better to have your own site or use one through a corporation?
I am also experiencing the same issue as Mason!